This might seem like a very simple question.
I’d answer “I’m Jeremy”
But who are you really..
“I’m Jeremy, I’m a father, a son, a Qigong teacher, a therapist, a nerd, a lover not a fighter, a wood worker, good with my hands.. a music lover and ex Dj… crazy about Cats and Dogs, I love walking and Nature….”
But that’s just a list of ideas!
Who am I really?
I’m with the Philosopher Daniel C Dennett on this one.
His analogy is that of a Newsroom.
Hundreds of reporters all working on their own stories, some are collaborating on bigger more important pieces.
We won’t know what the most important current story is until it hits the front page and get published.
It doesn’t mean that the other stories won’t emerge, just, that this is the current version of you today..
I bump into a student on the high street. I dip into the file marked “Teacher” and set up the profile ready for use.
I bump into an attractive young lady in a coffee shop, I open the file marked “Charming” and depending on the current circumstances possible the file marked “Single” too!
Later I have an appointment with a client, now it’s time to assume the role of “The Therapist”
I go on a course to learn how to bake bread, there’s another new folder.
There’s a neat cross-reference system like a website’s “word-cloud” – I can pull out the folder marked “Baking” when I’m chatting to this lady in a coffee-shop, or with my family at a dinner, or on retreat over a bread roll, to break the ice in starting a conversation.
Many of these files can be cross-referenced, and used in multiple situations.
Some of these files hold less happy information.
Imaging paitning a very high ceiling in a very big ballroom.
Let’s think of a tower scaffold, with a platform on top
Each of these towers represent the key ideas that make up Jeremy.
Some are good, some are bad.
Some are very tall, and very central, others are smaller and perhaps at the side of this vast room.
Take a look at my central scaffold tower.
Painted on each strut of the scaffold are words, if you look carefully you can make some of them out.
“Insecure,” “Not good with money,” “A bit unreliable.” “Inconsistent”
Each of these words supports this scaffold.
Eventually this tower of words comes to a platform.
On the top of the platform is a small boy, with bright red hair, on his T-shirt it reads “I was adopted” – he looks sad and bewildered..
Maybe you have different platforms?
What words are written on the scaffolding?
How many scaffolds do you have? Too many to count? Just a few, but they are really big!
Back in the Newsroom, there are stories that are being dug out of the past.
The filing system is kept by a character who looks and sounds like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Some of the stories have been files away so deeply and carefully that he hardly knows how to find them.
From time to time he picks up a random folder, and takes it to the Newsroom.
Some deep dark secret, you hoped would never come out. (Lies have very short legs they say..)
This character from your subconscious can always find some way to expose the story that’ll hurt you most deeply.
When we start to really examine some of these towering edifices, we start to see that some of the are not even REAL!
Look at the character on the top.
Perhaps it has something to do with Money.
Perhaps you’ve actually been quite successful in your life, but at some deep level you feel you don’t deserve it. Why is this?
Let’s investigate this tower. Perhaps it was constructed for you by this Gollum character? Perhaps he’s woven a story for you that isn’t even based in fact?
It looks very real amongst all the other towers, but as you look harder, you start to see that each strut that holds the tower up is actually formed from another person’s opinion.
Here’s your Grandfather telling you that money is hard to come by, here’s your father who made money but lost it all in a stroke of bad luck, he’s your Mother who tells you never to take any financial risks, here’s the government telling you the economy is terrible and that rates will have to change.
You look at the reality, which is a good job, being paid well, some savings, you own part of a house and you have a pension brewing nicely!
Isn’t it time that you knocked this tower down!?
Back in our internal Newsroom.
We know what journalists are like! They like a good drink.
It’s much easier for you to go out for a big night out with your mates, have a few bottles of wine, avoid thinking about “all this stuff”
Maybe these Journalists like to go out on The Pull! They like to go out chatting up people to avoid thinking about the reality of what needs doing. Some of these lazy Journos prefer getting a pizza and sitting watching Netflix all night.
Perhaps they like to hide behind a giant tub of Ben and Jerry’s?
Here’s Gollum, what’s he found to upset you with?
Let’s say you are walking through a shopping mall on you way home from work.
you step onto the escalator and look at the people below you, as you travel down, you see the familiar colour and cut of your ex-partners hair. The jeans are exactly the same, and definitely the same rain jacket!
Your mind is instantly back at the last time you talked. They were very upset with you, told you some very strong “home truths” about yourself. It was very nasty and embarrassing. They shouted at you a lot, it was scary and intimidating, you didn’t part on good terms at all and now you are about to bump into them in a crowded shopping centre, AND they’re holding hands with a new partner -oh god this is going to be horrible!
Barely one second has past since you stepped onto the escalator.
Gollum has pulled up all the files on your Ex, and has already pulled up some of your useful and somewhat LESS useful files to use to defend yourself.
Electro-magnetic signals fire all over the brain like one hundred alarm-clocks going off.
These signals ignite thousands of chemical messengers all over the body, stress hormones flood trough you.
You are instinctively looking for the exits! Can I run back up this crowded escalator!?
Your face is bright red, your heart-beat is massively elevated, your fists are clenched as is your jaw..
She steps off the bottom step, looks back.. It’s not even her!
You have to sit for twenty minutes and have a large glass of wine, maybe two, to even start to recover!
You see the power of these stories, true or not?
Sometimes we allow these stories to run every day, we look in the mirror, contemplate or day at work, and already the horror stories are flowing and the body is filling with toxic chemicals. Day after day, after week after week, follows year after year.
This is one of the key roots of all Chronic illness
When we are young, many of these towers are built for us.
Do you see how words are the structure of our consciousness?
If I hold up an object made of a material you’ve never seen, and with a shape that suggests nothing to you, what can you do with that?
You have no words, no vocabulary, it is quite literally NOTHING.
Our natural curiosity leads us to ask questions, what’s it for, what’s it made of, what’s it called.
By using language we build a concept.
This is what we have always done, this is how our consciousness works.
Daoism doesn’t care about naming things, owning things, about acquiring knowledge.
We put such a high price on Knowledge.
It requires time and money to acquire knowledge, therefore it makes us special, makes us stand out from the crowd. “Ah yes, The Professor, he’s amazing!”
From a Daoist perspective that’s time wasted.
Flow with nature, be like water, empty your mind.
My mind is full, I’m trying to empty it, in part by putting it in books.
My second book is on its way. When it’s done, there will be another section of empty shelves in the storage area, another load of stories that I’ll no longer need to refer too.
Some of these towers are very “real” we think.
They have really serious words holding up the platforms.
Maybe you were abused as a child. Each strut of the tower has “hurt,” “abused,” “damaged,” “depressive,” or “problematic” written on them.
This tower stands in the middle of the room, huge and central.
Everything in your life is an expression of this story.
But is it really important?
(I don’t wish to minimise anybody’s terrible story here, just try to find a new perspective..)
The first thing to ask is “Is the abuse still happening to me right now?”
You always need to make yourself safe as step one.
Take a bag, take a credit card, take some cash from the bank, take the car, get as far away as you can, tell the police and social support. Make yourself safe, hide with a friend.
If you are safe, then to the question is it happening now, the answer is “No” – but it stays at the back of my mind always.
Just remember this, every moment spent dwelling on your past is a moment that’s being stolen from your present.
The bad thing happened and now and every day since, you have given it time from your life.
This is even worse, when you can finally identify the fact that these stories aren’t even REAL stories!
What do we do?
1. Make ourselves safe, do what you have to do.
2. Give ourselves space to contemplate.
Contemplate is different to Meditate.
This is sitting quietly, and turning your mind to examining these structures.
The more you shine your light of consciousness on these towers, the more you begin to see that they are just epic illusions.
Do this by just by looking at this process, and asking yourself, “does this structure still serve me?”
My colleague John once walked into class and said to me ”I just saw a structure that I developed when I was twelve to protect myself at boarding-school – thirty years later I’m still using it! Today that stops!”
In China on retreat, I stared at the massive structure of “My Adoption” – the words are capitalised, because they were SO important in my life.
They coloured everything, the tower was so big, that it threw shade on everything around it. For weeks, in China I considered it from every angle.
What strut could I kick out to bring this massive tower down!?
I gave up fighting. This was the biggest battle of my life to date, I couldn’t go on any longer. I’d had enough, there was NO solution. Maybe the Teachers were all wrong and some things you just have to live with..
I awoke the next day, and the tower had collapsed.
I was diligent, I examined it from every angle, I was convinced that it had to go, and as soon as I stopped holding on TOO tightly, it was gone!
Be diligent, do the work. Ask the guys in the Newsroom what stories they are working on.
Search the records room, and don’t take anything Gollum tells you as the truth!
Burn all his files!
Go into the ballroom, and start kicking and hacking away at the struts of the biggest tower.
What’s left when you destroy all of this?
If we are just a series of competing stories, if our self, as described by our consciousness, is just a series of words and their resulting concepts, what will be left?
The process is slow, but can be amazing.
The process can be painful. You are so deeply identified with some of these stories, that ripping of the bandage can be exceptionally painful, but it’s always better to let the wound air.
There are so many stories that it’ll take a while to clear them all out, so you’ll not be gone in a flash!
Some people assume it’ll be like a form of Alzheimer’s, “it’s so sad, he used to be a vibrant version of Jeremy, now he’s just an empty husk!”
Each load you take off your shoulders opens up a NEW happiness.
Day by day you edge towards a calmer and happier version of yourself.
Each day, less and less can hurt you, as you dissolve the stupid fake patterns around you.
No more stress, but MUCH more Love
Your ‘society stories’ about how horrible “other” people are fall away and you see that everybody is amazing.
Don’t get me wrong, you can still see the massive flaws in people, you don’t suddenly become stupid and gullible, you just start to see that everybody is doing the best they can with the tools they currently have!
Your anger dies down.
You feel less inclined to judge everybody and that includes yourself!
The critical dialogue in your head quietens, the need to be right drifts, everything starts to become LOVE.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just in the foothills of this process.
I’m still happy to growl at somebody walking down the pavement towards me, with their head buried in their phone. You can still expect me to occasionally bark at another driver..
All I can ask is that you give it a go yourself.
Take a few days off. Sit silently with yourself.
List the towers, what are the words that construct them?
What are the figures that stand atop these towers?
Think about stores that the reporters are working on.
If you can start to map out the formative aspects of your life that no longer serve you, then you can start to make radical and everlasting change to your life.
As Dr Pang says, “Change your Mind, Change your Destiny!”
Hun Yuan Ling Tong!
(We say this in Zhineng Qigong as a kind of watch-word. It has many depths, ideas and meanings, but one translation might go something like this, “The fundamental Qi of the Universe is always flowing though your life and is always abundantly supporting you!” What more might you need!?
Love, love, love – Jeremy